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The CASE expression, for example, enables SQL to perform conditional branching within queries, providing a mechanism to return different values based on evaluated conditions. This logic can be particularly useful for data transformation during retrieval, especially in SELECT statements.
In such case it is always possible to use a function call, but this can be cumbersome and inelegant. For example, to pass conditionally different values as an argument for a constructor of a field or a base class, it is impossible to use a plain if-else statement; in this case we can use a conditional assignment expression, or a function call ...
Functions written in C offer the best performance, but bugs in code can crash and potentially corrupt the database. Most built-in functions are written in C. In addition, PostgreSQL allows procedural languages to be loaded into the database through extensions. Three language extensions are included with PostgreSQL to support Perl, Tcl, and Python.
However, note that performance suffers when there are more than 100 alternatives. Placing common values earlier in the list of cases can cause the function to execute significantly faster. For each case, either side of the equals sign "=" can be a simple string, a call to a parser function (including #expr to evaulate expressions), or a ...
A function is a subprogram written to perform certain computations. A scalar function returns only one value (or NULL), whereas a table function returns a (relational) table comprising zero or more rows, each row with one or more columns. Functions must return a value (using the RETURN keyword), but for stored procedures this is not mandatory.
condition: An expression which is evaluated as a boolean value. expression 1, expression 2: Expressions with values of any type. If the condition is evaluated to true, the expression 1 will be evaluated. If the condition is evaluated to false, the expression 2 will be evaluated.
This illustrates an alternative method of specifying the default case, which can appear first, last, or anywhere in between. If no default is specified and no case matches the supplied value, a null value is returned. For each branch of a #switch, either side of an equals-sign "=" can be a simple value, an expression, or a template call.
A foreign key is a set of attributes in a table that refers to the primary key of another table, linking these two tables. In the context of relational databases, a foreign key is subject to an inclusion dependency constraint that the tuples consisting of the foreign key attributes in one relation, R, must also exist in some other (not necessarily distinct) relation, S; furthermore that those ...